Description: Public education is critically important to the human capital, social well-being, and economic prosperity of nations. It is also an intensely political realm of public policy that is heavily shaped by power and special interests. Yet political scientists rarely study education, and education researchers rarely study politics. This volume attempts to change that by promoting the development of a coherent, thriving field on the comparative politics of education. As an opening wedge, the authors carry out an 11-nation comparative study of the political role of teachers unions, showing that as education systems everywhere became institutionalized, teachers unions pursued their interests by becoming well-organized, politically active, highly influential - and during the modern era, the main opponents of neoliberal reform. Across diverse nations, the commonalities are striking. The challenge going forward is to expand on this study's scope, theory, and evidence to bring education into the heart of comparative politics.
Brief description: Susanne Wiborg is Reader in Education at University College London Institute of Education, member of the Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies (LLAKES), and leader of the MA programme in Comparative Education at University College London. She has published widely on comparative history of education, focusing particularly on the policy and politics in secondary education in Scandinavia and Europe. She is the author of Education and Social Integration: Comprehensive Schooling in Europe (2009).
Review Quotes: 'This edited volume is a truly exceptional piece of scholarship, bringing together leading scholars in the comparative study of education. The individual chapters provide an in-depth analytical perspective on education reforms in different countries both in the [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] and beyond. Terry M. Moe and Susanne Wiborg have masterfully managed to integrate the individual chapters into an overarching theoretical framework. In doing so, their contribution will have a lasting and significant impact on the agenda of the growing research field of the comparative study of the politics of education.' Marius R. Busemeyer, University of Konstanz, Germany